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By adapting the Obama-era policy of “strategic silence” in the wake of the selection of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s enforcer Ebrahim Raisi as president of Iran, the Biden administration is tacitly endorsing his appointment, presumably in hopes of persuading him to return to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or nuclear deal, after his inauguration in August. The ballooning social protests across Iran, however, suggest that a return to “strategic silence” at this critical juncture could be as great a missed opportunity this summer as it was twelve years ago when the then Obama administration studiedly ignored the greatest threat to the Islamic Republic since its inception in 1979. A more productive policy might be to revisit the successful Cold War precedent, summed up in the word “solidarity,” for forward-leaning engagement with the Iranian people.


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Victoria Coates
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